The Hawaii State Fire Board says lawmakers need to invest between $1 million and $4 million to revive the State Fire Marshal’s Office, up to 23 times more than the $172,000 lawmakers have allocated for the office so far.

Fire officials have repeatedly said the office could address persistent deficiencies in Hawaii’s fire safety and prevention practices in light of the Maui wildfires in 2023. The state has had not had a fire chief since 1979 when lawmakers dissolved the office, citing overlapping functions with county departments.

But the appropriation the Legislature approved last session for the position, which includes salaries for the marshal, an assistant and office supplies, falls short of the resources that would be needed to handle a list of duties. the fire board has established.

The fire board will finalize those recommendations Friday before sending them to the Legislature for review ahead of the 2025 session.

They call for the marshal to focus on fire prevention by regulating building safety and fire safety standards, guiding state wildfire education and prevention efforts, developing regulations and coordinating state agencies.

Lawmakers allocated $172,000 to reactivate the office as part of Law 209enacted in July. State fire chiefs and other fire officials have said funds are too low to maintain an office, much less hire a fire chief to build the agency from scratch.

Hawaii County Fire Chief Kazuo Todd, president of the fire board, said he suspects the money was intended as a stopgap measure to give lawmakers an idea of ​​what an office should look like and what funding it should receive.

But the government contracting process is slow. In fact, the job has not yet been announced.

However, legislative funding is difficult to reconcile for Hawaii Wildfire Management Organization co-executive director Elizabeth Pickett, especially after the Maui fires that killed 102 people and destroyed more than 2,200 structures last year, which cost the state and federal governments billions of dollars.

The nonprofit was founded 23 years ago by former state wildland firefighters to help communities protect themselves from wildfires.

“We just gave billions of dollars, but we can’t raise more than $170,000 to make sure it doesn’t happen again? This is about our priorities as a state,” Pickett said.

The Act 209 allocation included $120,000 for the marshal’s salary, a salary level that county fire captains could expect to receive, but not what a top-level fire executive officer would typically earn.

Honolulu Fire Chief Sheldon Hao receives at least $224,304, Big Island’s Todd earns $194,400 and Maui County Fire Chief Brad Ventura receives $183,889.

Salaries for state fire chiefs typically fall within about 15% of the income of big-city department chiefs, said Butch Browning, executive director of the National Association of State Fire Chiefs. The current proposed salary is “extremely low,” he said.

The fire board’s draft job description calls for a bachelor’s degree and five years of experience as a fire chief or deputy fire chief. Desirable qualifications include a list of fire-specific certifications and a graduate degree.

Starting ‘at the bottom end’

The $120,000 salary is in line with what the fire board recommended to Governor Josh Green last yearaccording to a summary of the council’s bushfire mitigation proposals from December.

Todd said there wasn’t much thought put into the $120,000 recommendation, but he acknowledged that “the goal was to get to the lower end.”

Two phases of the Attorney General’s Office Lahaina Fire Incident Analysis Report have arisen since the council made its proposals. Each phase has highlighted deficiencies and gaps that a fire chief could address, expanding the position’s scope of responsibility, once legislation had already been passed.

“That’s why we come back to session every year, so we can confirm what it is we want the fire chief to do,” said Rep. Linda Ichiyama, who co-chaired last year’s Wildfire Prevention Task Force. .

Meanwhile, the council, which will name the fire chief, has informally contacted several potential candidates with little success, members said at a meeting in late October.

“We trust this person to be the solution to a lot of problems, but he’s not really offering the salary that would be in line with expectations,” Todd said.

The council now proposes $150,000 as the most appropriate salary in its draft report to the Legislature, Todd said.

Meanwhile, there is debate over whether the marshal’s office should report to the governor’s office or the Department of Labor and Industrial Relations.

“We’re flying the plane while we’re building it,” Todd said.

Last month, the fire board approved the possibility of making a temporary hire for the position, although Todd doubts it will be practical given that the marshal will have to organize an entirely new office.

Hawaii’s executive branch has suggested temporarily turning to the state’s Division of Forestry and Wildlife and the Hawaii Wildfire Management Organization to implement more immediate fire mitigation measures.

Pickett said that might be appropriate, given the immediate need for the state to bolster fire safety and wildfire prevention.

And it would give the state time to determine the marshal’s ultimate role and how to fund it, Pickett said.

Three staffing models are suggested

As the only state without a fire marshal, Hawaii has 49 potential plans it could consider. Some states make the sheriff’s office an independent agency, while others place sheriffs under departments such as the state police.

The fire board suggests three possible office structures, all under the Department of Labor and Industrial Relations.

They include a fully staffed office costing $3.98 million with 42 administrative, operations and training staff, a mid-level model with 23 workers costing $2.27 million and a smaller staff model with 14 employees which costs $1.36 million.

By comparison, Oregon allocated the state fire marshal’s office just over $92 million in your budget 2023-2025 after elevating the office to the level of a state agency last year.

The fire council suggests allocating an additional $500,000 to the state fire marshal’s office once it is established, so it can hire consultants to help the office understand the cost implications associated with implementing everything set out in the Act 209.

Once that picture becomes clearer, the state could think about creating sustainable funding channels for the office, said Browning of the National Association of State Fire Chiefs.

States typically pay their fire chiefs through permanent funding lines, similar to state police. Once a state fire marshal is installed, the office could also be eligible for federal funding opportunities for fire safety programs.

Some states have added a 1% to 2% tax to insurance premiums to help fund sheriff’s offices, Browning said.

doivil Beat’s coverage of Maui County is funded in part by a grant from the Nuestro Futuro Foundation.